Spokane County looks to cut $7M to $18M before rolling out 2025 budget

(The Center Square) – Spokane County's 2025 budget cycle is underway, and it's off to a rough start.

The Board of County Commissioners sounded the alarm in June when sending a letter to each department noting tax revenue shortfalls. The elected officials stated they were eliminating all vacant positions and asked the departments to identify other cost-saving measures.

At the time of the letter, the officials noted that the county was generating less than half of the anticipated 2% growth for sales tax revenue in 2024. Then, on Monday, Randy Bischoff, the county’s senior director of Finance & Administration, said it could be even less than that.

“We do get advanced warning from the state of Washington,” Bischoff said, “and we are not expecting to see our August sales tax to be positive based upon the state’s outlook.”

While the county expects sales tax revenue to remain relatively flat, other areas are seeing increases and decreases; when combined, Bischoff said the 2025 revenues should surpass what was budgeted for this year, approximately $257 million, or roughly 0.5% more than 2024.

He said that after eliminating the 120 to 150 vacant positions and fulfilling each department’s funding requests, the county would still be around $7.7 million short. If the county puts the vacancies back in, the budget shortfall would grow to roughly $18 million.

“Us guessing, I guess, is probably not the best way to handle this,” Bischoff said. “I think it’s better to take it back to the people that actually know their department.”

Commissioner Mary Kuney mentioned that a similar approach was taken in 2018 and worked well from an internal perspective. She agreed that when it comes down to it, the department heads know their areas best, not the statutes that dictate the first viable options.

Kuney wants to identify overlaps between the departments to see where they can enhance efficiencies and clean up the budget to stretch revenues.

Bischoff said the next step is determining what to take back to the departments and asking them to identify further cuts. The commissioners are scheduled to hear a presentation on the preliminary budget on Sept. 3, so there’s not much time left to get the county’s ducks in a row.

After the initial presentation, the budget will undergo three public roundtable discussions between Sept. 24 and Nov. 5 before the final budget adoption hearing on Dec. 2.

Spokane County CEO Scott Simmons said the departments’ requests are not a reflection of the final budget. However, with the initial presentation coming up, he wants something more concrete before heading to the roundtables.

“We would like to endeavor to give you at least an initial balanced budget,” Simmons said, “and then give the departments opportunities to come in and say, ‘Okay, if that’s my budget, here are some additional requests I have or here’s some of the things I wouldn’t be able to do.’”